There’s a lot of great articles and infographics about testing different variables for your email marketing campaigns – most pervasive are time and day of the week. Same goes for subject lines (and to a lesser extent, the first sentence in your email, called the “pre header text”).

But did you know that the factor that influences the most whether or not an email gets opened is who the email is from?

So if you pursue an email marketing strategy

Make sure you’re recognizable

Include both the name of the person who’s sending the email as well as the name of the company, and even better: send using your own domain.

The three rules for email marketing sender etiquette

1) You should have a relationship with the people you’re sending to.

They’ve purchased from you, been to your brick and mortar place of business, visited your website or your Facebook page and, when they did, you specifically asked them for permission to send them newsletters, promotions or other electronic messages.